


Paper Thin

by Lady Divine Coldflash (fhartz91)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Barry and Lisa are about the same age, College, Crushes, Len is seven years older than them, Len is still a criminal though, M/M, Masturbation, Non-power AU, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7974070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhartz91/pseuds/Lady%20Divine%20Coldflash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard Snart has loads of secrets. For one, he's attending NYU as a front. The second, he's crushing hardcore on his next door neighbor, Barry Allen, which, considering Len's life choices, might prove to be problematic. Len doesn't think that Barry knows about any of his secrets, but the most pressing at the moment is the fact that the walls separating their apartments are paper thin...which means that Len can hear everything Barry does in his bedroom.</p><p>He hears...and he looks forward to it.</p><p>***AU where Barry doesn't have his powers, but Len's back story is still relatively the same. This turned out a little more heartbreaking than I had originally intended, and for that, I apologize. Also, I don't really know much about the housing situation at NYU other than the names of the residence halls and where they're located. So if you happen to know more than me, just push that to the side for now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Thin

“So, what are your plans for the evening?” Barry asks, thumbing through his mail and organizing it by importance – letters from home, bills, junk – in the three-and-a-half minutes it takes to walk from the stairwell to his apartment.

“Same plans I have every Thursday night,” Len answers, twirling his keyring on his index finger twice, then catching his keys. Three times next, then catching them. Four times, and so on. “Studying, studying, and more studying.”

Actually _not_ studying, but that’s Len’s secret.

“Sounds like fun,” Barry says offhand, like he’s not particularly paying any attention. But then he yawns behind a solicitation postcard from the Red Cross, and Len can’t take too much offense.

“Well, if I know you, you’re going to take a shower, make yourself a spinach and chicken sandwich, and turn in early,” Len assesses, snagging Barry’s new issue of _Popular Science_ and flipping through the pages.

“You only know that because _I_ told you.” Barry peeks past Len’s shoulder when Len opens the magazine to the center spread, and an article cheerfully titled _Our Robot Overlords_.

“At least _I_ remembered,” Len says, cheekily turning the page when he sees Barry glance over.

Barry rolls his eyes. “If you _really_ remembered, you would know that Thursday night is curry night now.”

Len tilts his head and bats his eyes. “Is it _chicken_ curry?”

Barry shoots Len a look. “Possibly…”

“Then it’s practically the same thing.”

“You called it, Captain Brainiac.” Barry veers left toward his door. They have already passed Len’s apartment, but Len makes it a habit of walking Barry the few feet to his. More time to bother the shit out of him, he always says. “There’s extra if you want,” Barry offers, grabbing his magazine out of Len’s hands.

“I think I’ll pass this time,” Len declines. “Gonna go upstairs and say _what’s up_ to Lisa. Needle her a bit about that guy I saw her hanging all over at lunch. You know, what’s his name? Ciserno?”

“ _Cisco_ ,” Barry fills in, knowing Len said the name wrong on purpose. Len knows _exactly_ who Cisco Ramon is. The second Lisa brought up his name at lunch a few weeks ago, Len’s had the man’s number. Len’s baby sister Lisa is twenty, and in her third year at NYU along with Barry and Len, but as far as Len is concerned, she’ll forever be eight-years-old, with freckles on her nose and pigtails in her hair. Barry doesn’t have a younger sister, but he gets it.

So even though Cisco happens to be a good friend of Barry’s, he doesn’t make an issue.

Though how much longer Barry can dodge Lisa on the subject of helping fix the two of them up remains to be seen. He’s not looking forward to what Len will do if Lisa manages to get herself laid and Len finds out that Barry had _anything_ to do with it.

“Thanks, though,” Len says.

“Anytime.” Tired, Barry struggles with his keys before he unlocks his door. “Offer’s always open.” Barry gives Len a wave, walks into his apartment, and closes the door behind him.

Len stands out in the hallway with an ear pressed to Barry’s door, waiting to hear him head to the bathroom. Barry is a creature of habit. He’s bound by his routine, and follows the same exact schedule religiously every single day. Len hears Barry’s bathroom door shut, and only then does he head back down the hall to his own apartment. He sneaks in quietly and closes the door.

So, yeah, he lied. He doesn’t feel great about it, but, unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s lied to Barry. The thing is that Len is kind of a creature of habit, too. Barry has a routine, and so does Len. The two just so happen to coincide. It’s no big deal, really. In fact, he’ll probably cut out early this time and run up to Lisa’s apartment like he said. He never has before, but maybe he will. Then, he won’t have lied…much. No harm, no foul.

Yup. Sounds like a plan.

But, for now…

With Barry’s shower still going, Len gets prepared. He grabs a beer out of his mini-fridge, a half-eaten bag of Doritos from the kitchenette counter, and a magazine from his desk to read while he waits. He pulls up his favorite chair to the side of his bed and sits. He arranges his make-shift meal on the floor - beer to his right, chips to his left. He opens the magazine in his lap, and props his feet on the bed, facing the wall. It’s taken him less than two minutes to get ready. Since Barry’s shower started about three minutes ago, and Barry isn’t a guy who takes longer than fifteen minutes in the shower, Len calculates that he has approximately ten minutes to go, give or take.

Okay, so maybe he’s a little more committed to this than he’d like to admit.

Len finishes his beer, most of what was left in the Doritos bag, and has skimmed one-third of his magazine when he hears Barry’s shower water turn off and the bathroom door open. Len closes his magazine and puts it on the floor, carefully setting the beer can on top of it so that it doesn’t make a noise. He stays absolutely still, absolutely silent as he listens to Barry pad across the floor. The bed on the opposite side of the wall creaks when Barry sits on it.

Len holds his breath. Every night, when Barry climbs into bed, there’s always the chance that he won’t this time. That he’ll switch on the TV and zone out for an hour before he makes himself a bite to eat. He _did_ look exhausted, yawning, and trudging like a zombie to his apartment.

But then, he’s always like that. He’s a chemistry and physics double major, with a minor in biology. With the amount of work he does and the amount of time he spends at the on-campus lab, it’s a wonder he ever sleeps at all.

The silence draws out, and Len waits, but Barry does nothing. _Maybe he fell asleep sitting up?_ Len muses, picturing a half-dressed Barry, hair dripping wet into his face with a towel wrapped around his waist, sitting on the edge of his bed with his eyes shut, drifting off to sleep. Len considers knocking on the wall to jar him awake so he doesn’t tumble off his bed and injure himself, but then Barry would know that Len is there, and that would ruin this whole thing.

But it might get ruined worse if Len has to call the paramedics, and Barry has to be rushed to the hospital by the EMTs.

A younger than Len, sexy, _available_ EMT…

Len tenses in his chair, perched forward, ready to spring out when he hears a muffled, “ _ohhh_ ,” come through the wall. He lets the breath he’s been holding this whole time go, and smiles with a strange sort of triumph.

Barry didn’t fall asleep. Everything is going according to schedule.

Time for the show.

Thank God for cheap plaster. Not something one might expect at a prestigious school like NYU, but no institution is immune to wanting to save a buck. Len knows that from experience. He’s based a good portion of his criminal success on inferior building materials. The wall between Len’s bedroom and Barry’s bedroom is paper thin. Why Barry hasn’t realized this yet (since Len has had to come to terms with the fact that he himself snores…like a foghorn) is _beyond_ him.

It started shortly after Len moved in.

Moving in to Greenwich Hall was an impromptu decision. Attending NYU at all is just a front. Not that Len is letting himself get too comfortable. It’s been a good place to lay low, but he’s mostly there to keep an eye on Lisa. She’s the one working hard for her degree; Len is just attending the few classes he needs to not rouse suspicion. At first, Len was against Lisa going to NYU. His life has always been nomadic – hit up a place once, then keep his distance for a few years. He doesn’t lay down roots, and college is a big ass root. But Lisa doesn’t deserve to be stuck in the rut their dad had created and that Len had fallen in to. She deserves normal – college, friends, a chance at a real future that had nothing to do with ambushing armored cars and robbing banks. So when she got her acceptance letter, Len pulled a few strings, called in a few favors, and within a week, Lisa Snart and Jacob Silverman (the only alias he could get at short notice) were on their way to college.

She has an apartment in the same residence hall, but on the floor above them, and she has a roommate, which doesn’t thrill Len since it makes his job harder. Len would have preferred they get an apartment together nearby. Among a host of other things, he was concerned about blending in at a student residence hall considering he’s about seven years older than the average student in his grade, but he soon discovered that average means nothing in this day and age. Lisa wanted the full college experience, and that’s what he was initially afraid of, but living in Greenwich Hall is far from what he expected (which had basically been something along the lines of the movie _Animal House_ ). What it boils down to is he couldn’t deny her anything. He couldn’t have her resenting him for the decisions he’d made on her behalf.

He didn’t want to make a mistake that caused her to write him out of her life.

But it was only a matter of time. He knew that one day his dad would show up. Like a bad fuckin’ penny, he always did, usually when things were going good for them. And when the man did, Len would have to make a choice – continue with this façade and possibly make something of his life, come out of it miraculously with a college degree and find something other than “the family business” to do for the next eighty years; or go off with his deadbeat father and live up to everyone’s expectations of what Lewis Snart’s boy would become.

When the time comes, he doesn’t think his father will give him much of a choice. It’ll be him, or his sister, and Len is damn sure not letting Lewis Snart anywhere near her.

So, Len is playing the part of good college student for now.

Becoming friends with Barry Allen wasn’t a coincidence. Len made it a point when he moved in to dig up the deets on everyone living in Greenwich Hall. He didn’t want any surprises. Barry Allen was the only other student on his floor living alone, so he made sure to swing the apartment next to his. Little by little, he inserted himself into Barry’s life – walking him to the stairwell in the morning, catching breakfast with him at the dining hall, even transferring into one of his (easier) classes. Getting to know Barry, Len discovered that he was highly organized, extremely self-sufficient, observant, relatively private, hyper intelligent, compassionate, fair-minded, and with a spotless background that included close, personal friends in law-enforcement to boot.

Barry Allen turned out to be everything Len had hoped he’d find, but not for himself.

He was grooming Barry to look after Lisa in case anything ever happened to him.

He just didn’t expect to fall for him. That was never part of the plan.

“Oh…oh, God…”

Len knows the dance by now. He’s been listening to Barry perform it for months. He’s memorized the ritual that goes with it – a quick shower, and then, before he fixes himself dinner… _this_. Stress relief. This blissful moment where Barry takes matters into his own hands, and Len gets to visualize.

The first time this happened, Len was going to tease the ever living daylights out of Barry for it, really let him have it. But the smile Barry greeted Len with the following morning was so bright and warm and handsome, Len couldn’t do it. He couldn’t risk never seeing that smile again.

He could almost convince himself that _he_ was the reason behind that smile.

“O-oh,” Barry moans, shuddering. “Oh…oh God...”

Len has made picturing Barry masturbate an art form, the image so spectacularly clear in his mind, it’s as if he has seen it firsthand. Len leans back in his chair, closes his eyes, and there Barry is – lying on his back on his twin size bed, on top of the royal blue comforter that his friend Iris gave him, tucked in high and tight to cover his Superman sheets from view. In Len’s fantasy, Barry’s knees are bent up and his legs open wide – wide enough for Len to fit between. And if not, then wide enough so that Len can kneel on the floor and suck Barry’s cock into his mouth. Len imagines how he’d taste – his skin hot and moist from his shower, smelling of Ivory soap and Pantene shampoo, which Barry always uses.

Len could do it. He could take Barry up on his invitation, seduce him, fuck him, and get Barry out of his system once and for all. He’s done it before with other men and women, and didn’t care less. Just once and done like most everything in his life. But aside from being an insurance policy, Barry has become his friend – his _best_ friend. Len has only had that once before in his life. He can’t ruin that. He can’t step over the line. If he loses Barry’s friendship, he’d probably leave NYU, because as cold-hearted as he can be, he couldn’t stay knowing that Barry hated him.

And then what would Len do about Lisa?

Len has to remember that there’s a bigger issue at stake here. He can fuck up his own life fine, but he can’t do anything that will put Lisa in jeopardy.

Len doesn’t jerk off listening to Barry. It would be so easy to. He can see himself cumming so hard to the sound of Barry blowing his load. But this isn’t about stroke material. If that were the case, Len could easily pop open his laptop and Google a hundred different online porn sites. But listening to Barry is about making himself numb to what he shouldn’t want: the ideal, the boy next door, the guy who really gets him.

The man who, in another lifetime, could turn out to be _the one_.

But Len can’t do that to Barry, either. He can’t drag him into this fucked up existence he’s got going, even if it’s on hiatus. Going to NYU isn’t a permanent solution. Not for Len. Towing the line isn’t in his nature. That’s why he turns Barry down for dinner every night, then hides in the dark and listens to him jerk off.

What a life. What a fucking pathetic waste.

“Oh, _God_ ,” Barry moans with more fervor and a huskier voice, “oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.” Barry’s not much of a talker. He’s exclusively a _moaner_.

“Oh… _God!_ ”

And a pray-er.

At this point, with the bed squeaking in earnest, Len knows that Barry is almost done. Then Barry will clean himself up and make himself dinner. Len will go to bed, and life can return to normal for another 24-hours.

Well, Len’s fake life can return to normal- _ish_.

What Len wouldn’t give for once…just _once_ …to hear Barry cry out his name.

But then Len would _have_ to leave, find a way to convince Lisa to go with him and cut all ties, and he wouldn’t be able to tell Barry why.

 

“Yes,” Barry groans, his voice shaking so hard it slides between pitches. “Yes, oh, God! Yes, yes, yes…”

Len’s pants become tighter but he ignores it. He squeezes his eyes shut to conjure up an image of Barry cumming, but he does it with his nails digging into his thighs. He can barely feel his blunt nails through the denim of his jeans, but it still acts as an anchor. He’s considered stripping off his jeans so he can actually feel the bite of his nails into his skin, but that would lead to way too much temptation.

Len is a strong man, but he’s not certain he’s strong enough for that.

The bed stops creaking and Barry stops moaning. From the other side of the wall, Len hears a final choked gasp, and he knows that it’s over. Stars spin behind Len’s eyes thinking about licking Barry clean – his hand, his cock, his chest. But he discovers he’s been holding another breath. He quickly exhales, and then sucks in air, his mind going muddy for half-a-second before his vision clears and reality bleeds back in.

Sitting alone in his apartment, Len listens to Barry sigh, relaxing in to his mattress, probably wondering if it’s worth getting up and making that foul chicken after all.

Len knows he will. Barry always does. And Len always reconsiders popping over and joining him. This time, more than others, he gets close. He stands up. With determination, he heads for the door. He unlocks the lock, puts a hand on the doorknob…and stops. He slows his breathing, which had started to race with every step he took, and pulls his hand away. Eyes on the door, still debating, ever negotiating, he retreats, step by tortured step.

He walks back to his bedroom. He circles his chair a few times, but he’s too antsy to sit down, the feelings swirling through his head too complicated to pinpoint and label. He tries to think past them and decide what to do now. Does he finish his magazine? Does he make himself dinner? Does he go upstairs and talk to Lisa? Does he leave, go to a bar, down a few more beers and find a convenient one-night stand? He puts his hand up against the wall, palm flat, fingers splayed, and sighs. He can’t do that. He can’t be with someone else when he can imagine climbing in to bed behind Barry and wrapping his arms around him. Not when he can feel himself burying his nose into Barry’s hair and kissing his neck. Not when he can picture himself being happy this way for as long as Barry would be willing to have him, if he could only think of a way to tell him the truth that would make him understand…that wouldn’t put him in danger.

But Len can’t. And he probably never will.

His hand slides down the wall and returns to his side.

“Good night, Barry,” he whispers. He turns off his light and, without getting undressed, climbs into bed. He grabs his pillow and cradles it in his arms, hugging it tight. It’s not the same as the flesh-and-blood man next door with the clever green eyes and the boyish smile that makes Len feel like a teenager again every time it flashes his way, but it’ll have to do.

***

Barry lies flat on his back and stares at the ceiling, waiting to come down from his orgasm. He hears the blood in his ears rushing like a river, feels it answer in his veins and in the pounding of his heart. God, he loves that. He loves the tingle on his flesh and the exhaustion in his body. It doesn’t beat having someone else there with him, another person’s hand sliding over his fevered skin, but it’s the best he can do.

Especially since the man of his inner most fantasies won’t even accept an invitation to dinner.

Barry breathes heavily, hair clinging to his brow, damp from his shower and now with perspiration. His eyes pave a trail from the ceiling above him to the wall behind his bed, and he smiles. He reaches out a hand and runs his fingertips lightly along its slightly bumpy surface. Everything he’s ever wanted in a man is on the other side of that wall, turning off his light and going to sleep.

Barry knows. He knew from that first night he woke up to the most frightening noise he’d ever heard come from a human being. He’d thought that Len was choking on a chicken bone when really he was fast asleep, and from that moment on, Barry had concocted this plan.

To date, it’s not working the way he’d hoped.

But that’s not all Barry knows. He knows that Len has secrets – a whole sordid store of them. Thanks to Barry swiping his foster dad’s password to Central City P.D.’s criminal database and finding a way around them tracking his IP, he knows why everyone on campus calls his next door neighbor _Jacob Silverman_ when his name is actually Leonard Snart. Len had told Barry that _Leonard_ was his middle name after Lisa accidentally slipped and called him Len in front of Barry during the second week of their freshman year. Len has the poker face of a national champion, but from years of hanging around cops, Barry had noticed the shift in his demeanor. Len had come up with his cover story fast as lightning, but it was the slight pink around the tops of his ears that was his tell. Barry had to hand it to him, though. He was quick, and that deviation was subtle as hell.

But it was Cisco who had clued Barry in to the fact that the Snart siblings hailed from Central City. He’d told Barry that he’d sworn he’d seen Lisa there, where they’re both from, except at the time, she had blonde hair, not brown. Cisco had thought them all being from Central City was an amazing coincidence, but Barry didn’t believe in coincidences.

From what else Barry has been able to find out about Len, about his home life and his past, he has his suspicions as to _why_ Leonard Snart has been hiding out at NYU. He just needs Len to tell him straight out, once and for all. Barry has been waiting, not hinting at anything, biding his time in the hopes that Len will come clean.

Hoping that Len will be willing to trust him.

But today is not that day.

If Barry has accomplished one thing with this whole charade (because it doesn’t seem to be doing anything else to advance their “relationship”), maybe it will make Len think of him tonight.

It’s not the same as the two of them being together, but he’ll take it.

“Good night, Len,” Barry says, too softly for Len to hear. “Sweet dreams.”


End file.
